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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Why I despise Michelle Malkin

A few months ago Michelle Malkin made a snide remark* about how Henry Waxman (D-Ca) was going to set-up "obstructionist" oversight hearings on the Iraq resonstruction contracts (many of them no-bid and cost-plus) that T Miller demonstrated in Blood Money have resulted in billions of wasted dollars.

So what exactly would Henry Waxman be obstructing, Michelle? Corruption and incompetence preventing successful Iraqi reconstruction efforts? So who here is the obstructionist: the person who wants oversight or the person who doesn't?

Let me tell you about another "obstructionist". His name is Ted Westhusing. He was a colonel in the army with a PhD in Philosophy who taught ethics at West Point. Convinced that the invasion of Iraq was a just war, at 44 Westhusing volunteered for service and was put in charge of overseeing the training of an Iraqi police squad by a private contractor.

In the course of doing his job, Col. Westhusing uncovered specific corruption within the company he was overseeing and in Iraq in general, and became despondent over the lack of honor and ethics within the reconstruction efforts. Despairing over his perceived inability to improve the situation, Col. Westhusing committed suicide, writing in his suicide note, "death before dishonor."

You can listen to Col. Westhusing's story here and Crooks and Liars has a round-up of recently released documents that "that paint a picture of a man tortured by the realization that our presence in Iraq was hopelessly corrupted and an unwinnable situation."

I've previously written about Col. Westhusing - here - where I noted the absurdity of a military psychologist concluding that Westhusing's "flaw" was that he could not accept that in a war zone monetary values could outweigh moral ones.

So this is why I despise Michelle Malkin. When she calls efforts to put an end to the corruption that drove Col. Westhusing to suicide "obstructionist" she is defending the rotten corruption that led to his death. Not to mention all the other lives that have been wasted due to those who put profit before duty.

*I tried searching Malkin's archives but I've been unable to find the post where she made this remark. If anyone knows where it is, a link would be appreciated.